J Simon
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Imagine a flower made of mirrors blooming at the speed of light. Have you got it? Good. Not that it has anything to do with anything. I just wanted to see if you’d do it. All right, go on, imagine a green dog with pink stripes. Now we’re getting somewhere.
My name is Zwirner. It may be my first name. It may be my last name. I’m not really sure. I was born, as you might expect, of parents, which is to say, I was the accidental by-product of a rather intimate ritual gone wrong. My parents thought they could use sex magic to summon a demon. They got me instead. I was raised, to a large extent, by a haunted television set, and had the privilege and honor of being treated, once a year on my birthday, to an interview of ten whole minutes with my parents. On my tenth birthday, I was so excited I puked on them both. It’s one of my proudest memories.
On this particular day, something very unusual happened. The door of my room opened. Peculiar. And I’d turned twenty-six just two months ago. I shrugged and made a mental note that I was now twenty-seven.
“Zwirner.” I didn’t recognize the man. He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen on television. Right now, the TV showed a smiling, happy blonde woman cooking something wholesome. The sound, a distorted bestial howl cut by static and the shrieks of the damned, informed me that any casserole could be spiced up by the inclusion of ghosts, whose unfinished earthly business made them taste oddly like cinnamon.
“ZWIRNER!” The man strode across the room and turned off the television. “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but your parents have died.”
“Have they?” I said, puzzled. “It seems out of character, not the sort of thing I’ve known them to do in the past.”
“Well, they got hold of something they couldn’t deal with, and… er… got eaten.”
“Speaking of eaten. The bite marks on the door,” I said self-consciously, “may appear to match my own teeth, but I assure you, it’s base coincidence. You won’t tell on me, will you?”
He glanced at me strangely. “I was your parents’ lawyer. They didn’t leave a will, which means that everything is yours. The manor. The grounds. The bank accounts.”
“No,” I said, “no, I don’t think I like that. I’d prefer to have my parents exist.”
“I share your sorrow—”
“I can hardly claim ‘It wasn’t me—THEY did it!’ when accused of numerous and multifarious crimes, if the person I’m accusing has predeceased me by a number of years.”
He looked at me strangely. “How many crimes have you committed?”
“Oh, none, yet. But a man likes to keep his options open.”
“I… see.” He backed slowly away. “Are you quite sure you’re all right? If you’d like, I could make a few calls. Hire someone to clean this place out. The basement door cracked open as I passed, and something giggled at me. Wetly. You might want to have someone disinfect that.”
“Sure,” I said, turning the TV back on. “We all grieve in our own way. Do what makes you feel better.”
He closed the door behind him. I leaned forward. A man with a beard was extolling the virtues of smoked meat. I turned up the volume, vitally interested to learn what made some barbecue sauces especially good, and others, especially evil.
* * *
Derivus showed up two days later, carrying a big metal toolbox. He didn’t look like an exterminator. He was an older man, tall and gaunt, with a ramrod-straight bearing and a rather short white beard. His eyes burned with something like religious zealotry.
“Are you a priest?” I asked politely.
“Damn all priests,” he said curtly. “We had one, you know, when I served in the War. There I was, guns in both hands, holding off an ocean of demons deep enough to swallow the world—with humanity itself for an after-dinner mint—and what did this super-genius discover? That not one of the Devouring Horde was Christian. Didn’t fear his crucifix or respect his authority at all. He spent the next six and a half years trying to teach goblins about the Trinity. Colossal waste of time.”
“I rather like priests,” I mused. “First, they try to perform exorcisms on me, which tickle, and after that they start drinking, which is always funny.” I snapped my fingers. “You know what you need? Beard extensions. You’d command much higher prices if you looked like a wizard.”
“Damn all wizards. Dance around all day shaking toads at things. It never works, and there I am with a flamethrower saving their collective necks, and what thanks do I get? A huge collective hissy fit because their wands got torched.”
“I rather like wizards,” I said. “They generally turn out to be pretenders or frauds, and then I tie them down and clamp their heads in iron straps and boil their beards to see if they’ll bloat up into interesting or funny shapes. Which, sadly, they never do.” I paused. “Is what I would do, in theory, if a fake wizard ever came door-to-door selling magic crystals, pewter figurines, and steak knives. Which none ever has. So far as you know.”
“I don’t need this,” Derivus grumbled, then paused, his hand moving toward his back pocket. “Then again, considering the state of my bank account, maybe I do. Some thanks for saving the world a hundred times over. Can we get down to business? Most of the stuff around here is way beyond me. My advice is, avoid it. Stay out of the ritual chamber. Skip the dungeon (why the hell do you have a dungeon?). To hell with going for a dip in that mist-mired excuse for a pond out back. If you wanted to pay major dollars to a big-time outfit, you could maybe fix the place up… but why bother? I can clean out the areas you’ll actually use.” He consulted a clipboard. “Starting with the kitchen. Nice fireplace, but the chimney is lousy with gnomes. Infested. And not the clever sort that’ll cook up a hummingbird so it looks like a tiny turkey, either. These are some real grade-A clods.”
“Ah!” I said, impressed. “So that explains the high-pitched choking and coughing noises the last time I lit a fire! And the pitter-patter of tiny, adorable bodies plummeting into the flames, and the sizzling and popping, and the cloying stench that made my grilled-cheese sandwich such a unique experience!”
“I have a spray,” Derivus said. “It’s humane, if such a word even applies to non-humans. Not that I can afford the brand-name stuff, but this crap, well, it makes ‘em sneeze. That’s something.”
“We should avoid killing,” I agreed. “Killing is bad. Life is precious, as the puppets on television are constantly telling me. On the other hand, as the Voices so persuasively rebut, ‘KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL!!!’“
Derivus glowered at me. “Listen up and listen good. I don’t scare. Ever. Maybe you think you can intimidate me, but I’ll tell you something: There’s a real good solution for evil. Just punch it in the face until it stops. You stay here. Stick your thumb in your ear and spin, or whatever seems advisable to you. I don’t really care. I’m going downstairs to take care of those gnomes.”
“Can I help?”
“Don’t kid yourself. This job isn’t cute, or fun, or exciting. It’s not a heroic triumph over the forces of Darkness. It’s hot, dirty, tiring work, which is why you’re paying someone else to do it for you. You get me?”
“Please?”
Derivus shrugged. “Your funeral. Maybe literally. Hell if I care. Do what you want.”
He picked up his big metal toolbox and kicked open the door to my room. I followed him down the stairs, past a number of paintings of shocked-looking people staring at something just out of frame, and on through a room decorated with trophy heads (“See the squirrels?” I said proudly. “I did the taxidermy myself. Snuck them in by dead of night so no one would notice.” I paused, my smile fading. “No one ever noticed.”). We finally arrived at the kitchen. It was bright and jolly, with stone walls and an expansive fireplace and lots and lots of blood-stained knives. Homey, is what I’m getting at.
“I like you,” I told Derivus. “You’re not predictable, like television. You don’t even have a theme song. Unless I missed it? Try leaving the room and coming back in.”
Derivus set his toolbox on the table, took out a couple of spray-cans, and sent an exploratory puff of mist into the dark recesses of the chimney. Nothing happened. Scowling, he tried a longer blast.
“Back in the War,” he said absently, “I stood toe-to-toe with all-devouring cosmic horrors and beat them. Now, I can’t even afford name-brand gnome spray. What the hell happened?”
“I think you’re doing a great job,” I said, glancing sidelong at him. “Like I did on those squirrel trophy heads. You saw them, right? Not that I’d expect you to say you were proud of me… but… if you wanted to, I wouldn’t stop you.”
“You were sloppy,” Derivus shot back. “You left ghosts, and lots of them. That room is rather extravagantly haunted by the ghosts of squirrels with unfinished business.”
“Well, we could always do an exorcism. Do squirrels have a pope?” I asked, trying to take an interest in his interests (the blue puppet assures me that this is the first step to making friends, and he was certainly on the ball when it came to potty training).
“You’re a funny man,” Derivus said, squinting at me. “Now, you could clean those ghosts up real quick if you ritual-murdered some acorns for them, but it doesn’t matter. Squirrels are almost to stupid to be alive. Their ghosts are almost too stupid to be dead. It’s all pretty much the same, one way or another.”
“Oh, before I forget,” I said, “would you rather be paid with money… or with an experience?”
“An experience?” Derivus said blankly.
“You know. An entrancing, spooky story to tell around the campfire. Now, I’ve never had the opportunity to try it, but I understand the theory of picking off one’s guests one by one. It’s that Final Girl you want to watch out for.”
“You’re a funny man,” he said, with slightly altered emphasis.
Grunting, Derivus went down on one knee so he could aim his spray-cans more directly up the chimney. He fired a double-barrelled blast, and just kept going, spraying continuously. Not a single gnome fled from the thickening fumes. His scowl grew deeper.
“I gave away twenty damn years of my life to that War… and for what?” he muttered.
“You saved us all,” I said helpfully.
“More than once,” he agreed. “But what did I get? When I came home, everything had changed, everyone was gone. I had a daughter, you know. She was a grown woman by the time I came back. We tried to make it work, but we were strangers to each other. It was just… awkward. Eventually she stopped calling.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to react to that,” I said honestly. “There’s a funny feeling in my eyes. Is that normal?”
“It’s best not to think about it,” Derivus said. He sprayed the two cans into the fireplace until they were empty. “Sometimes, it’s best not to think—period.”
I pondered the misty miasma of chemical fog that shrouded the fireplace. I raised an eyebrow. “Do you suppose that stuff is flammable?”
“You mean—” Derivus looked at me, awed. “It would be irresponsible. I can’t. Can I?”
“Do it. As your employer, and therefore owner, I command you. Light it up!”
Suppressing a smile, Derivus grabbed a matchbook from his toolkit. He lit a match, tossed it into the fireplace, and danced back with wonderful agility for a man of his age.
The whole thing went up in a giant, swirling FOOMP of flame that went straight up the chimney. With a rustling patter, stunned and blackened gnomes rained down, forming a pile at least two feet thick.
“Now that’s how you do it,” Derivus said, grimly satisfied as he tossed the empty cans back into his toolbox. “Back in the War, I mostly didn’t bother with gnomes. Beneath my time to deal with something so plebeian. But once, just for the hell of it, I agreed to clean out an infestation. Had my men bake up a couple thousand teeny-tiny blueberry pies, but with purple blobs of glue instead of blueberries, and tiny magnets hidden in each pie. After a couple hours, we swept around with a big iron bar and caught every damn gnome, since they’d all gotten stuck in our glue-pies. Now, since they weren’t actually dead, the next thing we did was…”
“Uh… what’s happening?” I pointed at the heap of gnomes, which had begun melting and weaving together into a single corrupt mass. Derivus turned and stared.
“Those weren’t gnomes, were they?” he said quietly. “That… thing… assumed the form of a herd of gnomes… but it wasn’t. It never was. No wonder my spray didn’t work.”
He dove for his toolbox, desperately digging through it. With stunning speed, the thing in the fireplace reared up, a weird and blasphemous tangle of fleshy tendrils woven together from the singed corpses of spurious gnomes. It lurched toward Derivus—
“WATCH OUT!” I cried, flinging myself in front of him. The thing slammed into me and I went down, its charred and grasping flesh wrapping around me.
“What the—?” Derivus glanced down at me, startled. “Uh, not that this is the right time to ask, but this isn’t going to affect my performance review, is it?”
“Mmmph!” I bleated.
“You’re doing great. Just keep it busy, will you?”
Derivus finally found what he was looking for and jumped over to the refrigerator. Drawn by movement, the Thing withdrew a couple hundred acid-tipped spikes from my flesh, stopped digesting my face, and tensed as if to leap at him. I really didn’t want to, but I winced and wrapped my arms around the Thing, hugging it nice and tight to keep it from attacking him. It started to struggle, slime and acid and digestive juices splattering everywhere and burning my face. But I was giving Derivus the time he needed—that was good, right? Unless he’d realized that allowing me to die would be a slam-dunk guarantee that he wouldn’t get a bad performance review, in which case I wasn’t doing so hot.
Derivus found a package of sodden, dripping meat in the refrigerator. “Not the freezer?” he muttered. Shaking his head, he ripped off the paper and grabbed a wad of meat. He stuck the ends of some long copper wires into it, pulled his arm back, and threw the meat like a baseball. The Thing swallowed the offering without hesitation, the copper wires trailing from its wide and sloppy maw.
“Get away from it—now!” he ordered me.
I was only too happy to roll aside as the Thing stalked toward Derivus. Smiling a little, he plugged the other end of the copper wires into a wall outlet. The results were spectacular. I’m not talking about the shower of sparks, or the seventeen mouths that opened all over the Thing’s body so it could scream—each and every mouth blowing flames like a blowtorch—while it ran around in circles, creating a black and roiling bagel of smoke. I’m talking about the smirk on Derivus’ face. It was epic.
The Thing collapsed into a pile of goo, bubbling and popping and gurgling all the while. Derivus glanced sidelong at me.
“You know, you pretend to be creepy, but you’re all right. You sailed right in there when you didn’t have to and saved the life of a man you didn’t even know. I’m impressed.”
“Would you say that you’re proud of me?” I said eagerly.
“Hmm. My intuition is screaming at me to quit while I’m ahead, but sure. I’ll be proud of you. For one whole second.”
“I—”
“Time,” he said, checking his watch.
“Look at me,” I said, showing him my arm. “Goosebumps.”
“Where?” he said dubiously.
“Huh.” I shook my arm, frowning. “By all rights I should have goosebumps. Apparently my skin is malfunctioning. Would you mind terribly if I cut off yours and stretched it over mine with pins, just until I get this sorted out?”
Derivus snorted. “All right. Maybe you aren’t pretending to be creepy. But you’re still all right.” He picked up his toolbox, glancing at the mess on the floor. “Guess I’d better clean that up, huh? Gonna be hell on my back, but I can’t afford to lose my fee. Such as it is.”
“You don’t have money,” I mused, “but I envy you. Your life is ripe with incident.”
“You can have it.” He glanced at the blood-stained knives. “The incident. Not my life.”
“You knew what that thing was, and how to deal with it. Your life is rich in expertise, if not in money.”
“And you’re brave, or maybe just stupid, which in this case is functionally the same thing,” Derivus agreed. “What’s the point?”
“Ah! But I’m a brave, stupid man with money,” I said persuasively. “Plus, if you were my employee, you’d be legally obligated to like me. What if we went into business together? What if I bankrolled us in an exciting, sexy business?” I snapped my fingers. “Like a paranormal investigation agency!”
“I don’t need money that bad,” Derivus said wryly, then paused, his hand wandering toward his back pocket. “Uh… just what kind of starting salary are we talking about, anyway?”
I
Investigating the paranormal is fun! Mostly because Derivus wants to blow everything up and shoot what doesn’t burn, while I want to trap cages full of cookie elves and see if I can mess with them by forcing them to bake croissants. Don’t say we don’t have fun.
The door to our office opened. We have two whole rooms in a strip mall, with pleasantly beige walls and florescent lights that flicker and buzz soothingly (according to those of us who enjoy being slowly driven mad). The walls were sadly bare when we moved in, but they’re now decorated with LOTS of trophy heads. Which, you guessed it, are all rather startled-looking squirrels. I’m still waiting for Derivus to admit how much he likes them. Odd he’s been able to hold out this long.
“Best Friends investigation agency!” I said brightly. Derivus, lunch in hand, looked momentarily pained.
“I can’t believe I let you name it that.”
“Did you catch any vampires?” I asked. Again, taking an interest in his interests.
“I got lunch.”
“And were any extremely small vampires included as prizes?” I said politely.
“For the last time. There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“But what about that time in the Yukon? Didn’t you say—”
“That was a werewolf,” he said patiently. “Back during the War, we caught a werewolf.”
“Werewolves are real?” I said nervously.
“Don’t worry about it. It took a while, but I broke his spirit and learned his secrets.”
“Really!”
“Technically, yes,” Derivus admitted. “It turns out I’m severely allergic, and werewolves are startled by loud noises. I essentially weaponized sneezes and spooked our captive into telling us everything.”
“Impressive!” I said.
Just then, the door opened and a young woman came in. She wore a greatcloak so long it almost swept the floor, but I was much more fascinated by her hair. It was spiky, and each triangular spike was colored black on one side, purple on another, and blue on the third, so she could change her look with a single swipe of her hand. In a word, she was cool.
“Best Friends investigation agency,” I said. “We jump down sewers and fight poop goblins so you don’t have to!”
“Wait, what?” Derivus said, startled.
She smiled warmly at me. “My name is Lisha. You know, that picture didn’t do you any favors. If I’d known you were so handsome, I would have come sooner.”
“Picture?” I said blankly. Without a word, Derivus slapped a newspaper on my desk. He’d circled an article which was captioned ‘SEARCHING FOR SPOOKS’ and subtitled ‘How far can you get with more money than brains?’
“Promising!” I said, intrigued.
She leaned closer. “I could really use your help,” she said earnestly. “You see, I have a huge inheritance waiting for me, but the will requires me to spend the night in a legit haunted house. If I had a simple ectoplasmic reticulator, I could cut you in for a hundred thousand, easy. All you have to do is loan me five grand to buy the equipment I need…”
“Is that an electronic monitoring bracelet on your ankle?” Derivus asked drily. Lisha hastily stood up, yanking her greatcloak down to cover it.
“It’s the style these days,” she snapped. “I’m stylish. It’s all the rage: Everyone who’s anyone is running around committing crimes in the desperate hope that they can look as good as me.” She glanced at me and the coldness instantly thawed from her face. “How about it? I bet a handsome man like you could do a lot with a hundred grand.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Money kind of lies there doing nothing. I’d rather stay who I am, but also, accidentally save the world somehow. It’s a life goal of mine to have people throw a parade in my honor.” I smiled at Derivus. “Or ours. How about it? Happy laughing children pelting us with flowers—what could beat that?”
He made a face. “Anything? Or were you playing another rousing game of ‘Make Derivus want to puke’? Congratulations on winning, I guess.”
“Tell you what,” I said judiciously. “We’ll super-glue the children into shiny sparkle tuxedos. That way, they’ll be extremely cute and extremely unhappy at the same time. Scowling, surly children hurling flowers at us! What do you say? Final offer.”
Derivus smirked. “There’s something seriously wrong with you. But fine. I agree. When we get our parade for saving the world, hell, I’ll buy the glue myself.”
Lisha ran her hand back and forth across her head, leaving a zig-zag trail of purple and black.
“More money than brains,” she murmured, glancing from the newspaper to Derivus. “I can guess which one of you they talked to.” Looking at me, she was suddenly all warmth and smiles again. “So, handsome, why don’t we go take a walk… alone?”
“Depends. Can I have an ankle bracelet like yours?”
“Sure,” she said, exasperated. “We’ll go joyriding in an ambulance. It’ll be fun. We’ll get you all glammed up with beeping court-mandated jewelry in no time. But—here’s the thing—car rental places demand a social security number. What’s yours?”
I glanced at Derivus, waiting for him to play the beneficent protector and save me from my own naivete. Instead, he just crossed his arms over his chest and waited, smiling faintly. I turned back to Lisha, who was waiting impatiently for my answer.
“I wish you were real,” I said sadly.
“Oh, but I am.”
“Oh, but you aren’t. You really aren’t. There’s this thing that pretty girls do when I express interest in them. They shoot me. With guns.” I cocked my head to the side. “Well, that hasn’t actually happened yet, but you have to read between the lines. What possible reason could you have for liking me so much, so fast? There must be a reason, and I can’t see as it could be a good one.”
“I’m a happy person,” she snapped. “I like people. It’s the way I am. You want proof? I’ll pry your mouth open and laugh right down your stupid throat. How’s that for happy?”
“Pretty good,” I mused, gazing at the trophy heads on the wall. “But, as a point against you, you haven’t offered to join me on a round-the-world cruise.”
“What?” she said, lost.
“See, I’ve read about science fiction conventions,” I said with growing enthusiasm. “What a time! Just think about it. The lost, the broken, the isolated are drawn together by the common bond of their shared interests for a cavalcade of costumes and drama and gaming and food… but… what’s the drawback? Obviously, a cruise ship would be better. There’s no way out. You literally can’t escape the fun! Plus, shared traumatic experiences bind people together for life, whether they like it or not. After all the harrowing near-death experiences I have planned for our trip, everyone will be forcibly compelled to love me!” I paused, blinking as I slowly lowered my arms. “Or maybe all the things that are going to happen were just amazing coincidences. I mean, you can’t blame me for the fact that all those icebergs were armed, can you?”
Lisha gazed at me for a long while. “Tell you what. You want an experience? You want a story? I’ve got one for you. Remember, I have to spend the night in a haunted house to earn my inheritance. Join me. Maybe we can survive the night without an ectoplasmic reticulator.”
“There really is a haunted house?” Derivus asked skeptically.
“You hard of hearing or just stupid?” she shot back. “Oh, wait. False choice. The question unfairly assumes you’re merely one or the other.”
“If Zwirner’s going, then I’m going, too,” he said flatly.
“Fine,” Lisha said, exasperated. She glanced at me with the air of someone who’d given up and was just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. “The thing is… ghosts hate cash money. The faces of the righteous dead, you know. Exactly how much money are you carrying?”
“She’s such a kidder,” Derivus said pleasantly. “So, Zwirner, we got any appointments scheduled for this evening? Didn’t think so.” He offered Lisha a mocking bow. “Just give us the address and we’ll meet you there.”
* * *
All houses should be haunted. It adds a vital level of interest to something that’s otherwise a boring old pile of plaster and sticks. Plus, ghosts make the ideal friends, given that the dead can’t die. I can talk and talk for as long as I want, and they can’t off themselves as a way of escaping from me!
The address we’d gotten from Lisha took us way out into the country. She met us at the front door, looking nervous. The house itself was something else. It was a three-story victorian with all kinds of turrets and gables and vine-swarded balconies that all but screamed ‘COME HAUNT ME ALREADY!!’, plus, the oak tree in the front yard was black and gnarled and utterly evil-looking. True, there were rather a lot of daffodils scattered about the yard, and I think I saw a bluebird fly off into the twilight, but you can’t have everything.
“Hey.” Lisha ran a worried hand across her head, somehow turning her hair to polka-dots. “You ready?”
“Approximately,” I agreed. Lisha fiddled with the door, which seemed stuck. After she’d worked on the lock for a good thirty seconds, it finally popped open.
“You should be more trusting,” I said, elbowing Derivus in the ribs. “Lisha’s salt-of-the-earth honest, she is. I can’t imagine a scammer owning a great big house way out in the country.”
“Fine. I’ll be more trusting… but you should be more observant,” Derivus shot back. “Lisha picked the lock. She doesn’t own this house at all. I’m guessing she looked up the address of the biggest, fanciest place that had been abandoned as haunted and told us to meet her there.”
“Why would she go through all that trouble?” I asked, my brow furrowing.
“Oh, this is still a scam,” Derivus said easily. “I dunno, once the ghosts show up, maybe she means to pick through our stuff after we run away screaming.”
“Our stuff?” I said, perking up. “You mean she’s interested in the severed heads of plush toys, which may or may not have had their mouths inexplicably sewed shut?”
“It’s got to be something.”
“I don’t think she’d count on us to cut and run,” I said judiciously. “I think this is meant to be a bonding experience, so that we—or I—trust her and are easier to scam in the future.”
“That’s not it at all,” Lisha said, fidgeting. “Shut up! Who died and made you the King of the Stoop, anyway?” She stepped inside and flipped a light switch, which did nothing. “Anyway, I’m as honest as the day is long.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Derivus said drily, glancing at the last fading glow of twilight. Glaring at him, Lisha led us inside.
The house was completely empty. All the furniture had been removed, and without working lights, the cavernous rooms seemed to be wrapped in shadows and secrets. We made our way to a huge living room with a great panel of windows all along the west wall, its hardwood floor empty save for dust. Lisha shrugged and sat down, her back against the north wall. I sat across from her, and Derivus claimed the third wall. He took out a device somewhat like a small compass and carefully held it up to his eye.
“If there’s anything powerful and weird around here, we’ll find it quick enough. All we have to do is…” Derivus paused. The little arrow was pointing straight at me. He shook the compass, but the arrow might as well have been sealed in cement.
“Zwirner. What the hell? Have you been chewing on magic wands or something?”
“Maybe it’s this,” I said, showing him the tarnished ring on my right hand. I swung my hand back and forth, and the little arrow tracked it unerringly. “It’s called ‘The Maw of Mhurban-Zchtbir’. Extremely powerful, they say. It was my parents’ most prized possession. Insane monks have been fighting over it—and dying in increasingly ridiculous ways—for over seven hundred years. The last one was found with seven gloriously weird feathers lodged up his… well, never mind that. It almost has to be useful for something, wouldn’t you say?”
“Like driving us all insane with terror?” Derivus shot back.
“I think maybe I should leave,” Lisha said quietly.
“You don’t want to claim your inheritance?” I said, startled.
Lisha gazed evenly at me. “Let’s say there was a girl who realized that life wasn’t fair. That you didn’t get anything, ever, unless you took it. So she decided, when she got punched down, to punch back twice as hard. In time, she realized it was easier to throw her punches first, so that her enemies wouldn’t see it coming. And since everyone is just an enemy you haven’t met yet…” She shrugged. “This girl, she learned to scam a certain class of people. She learned to handle them, to make their pain and anger and frustration work for her. But you can only take a mark like that for so much. Going for a bigger score… well, it meant leaving her comfort zone. Taking risks. Making mistakes, maybe.” Lisha grimaced. “Someone who hustles people at pool, she budgets on the ball sometimes rolling the wrong way. She doesn’t budget on dark powers making it sprout big poofy lips and sing show tunes at her.”
“Wait,” I said. “I want to get this absolutely clear. Are you for or against magic singing pool balls?”
“It’s a metaphor. It means that I’m cutting my losses before this goes any further downhill.” Lisha stood up—and the room’s only door slammed shut, locking with an ominous click. The three of us glanced at each other. It was getting very, very dark. Derivus pragmatically clicked on the little electric lantern he’d brought in, but it somehow only emphasized how dark and scary everything outside of its feeble light was.
“You want to help me break the door down, maybe?” Lisha asked.
“You’re the one who asked us to stay the night,” Derivus said evenly. “Let’s see how this plays out.”
Lisha sank back down to the floor. “Fine with me. Whatever makes you giggle, pal.”
Derivus snorted. “You remind me of my last commanding officer, back during the War.”
“Because she was strong and inspiring?” I guessed.
Derivus smirked. “Because commissions go to people with no actual skills, considering that their uniforms draw fire and keep useful folks clean.”
Lisha glared at him. “If I wanted stories that sent a message, I’d finish them by punching you in the face.”
“Now you remind me of what I found on the bottom of my boot after I stomped on the Frog Lich.”
We sat there, saying little, doing nothing. Time passed. Oddly, the darkness around the periphery of the room seemed to be thickening, swirling… even moving. I suddenly spotted hundreds of glinting little lights through the window. No, it wasn’t my imagination. Eerily glowing eyes peered in from outside. Buckets of ‘em. And while my first thought was, ‘New Friends!’, a very real terror started to grip my chest. Breathing hard, almost panting, I curled my hands into fists—
“Wait.” Derivus glanced alertly to the left and right. “Why the hell do I feel so afraid?”
I blew out a shaky breath. I glanced at the window, and was astonished to see that the eyes were gone. “I feel it, too.”
“Not me,” Lisha said unsteadily. “Maybe you’re just cowards.”
Suddenly, something started knocking on the ceiling above us. I leapt to my feet, my heart hammering wildly. On the other side of the closed door, a weird scuffling sound dragged itself closer and closer. I stared at the door, my entire body gripped by an icy, paralyzing fear. The handle began to turn…
“Hallucinogenic drugs,” Derivus said decisively.
“What?”
“Hallucinogenic drugs. I’ve seen it before. The resident spooks are blowing spores under the door. We’re fighting a bunch of goddamned mushrooms is what’s happening. None of this is real. I mean, those skittering centipede-maggot-spider things crawling down the walls… do either of you see those?”
“Well, I do now,” Lisha said crossly.
“And that knocking sound coming from the room above us, that’s fake?” I asked hopefully.
“No, I hear it, too. We agree on that,” Derivus said. “That part is real. Nothing else.”
“Great,” Lisha grumbled. “So you’re saying, not only do we have to survive a night inside a haunted house, we get to come down from the world’s stupidest drug trip while we’re at it?”
“Keep describing what you’re seeing!” Derivus said sternly. “You, too, Zwirner! It’s the only way to figure out what’s real.”
The knocking stopped, although the creature or creatures kept making disturbing noises at unpredictable intervals. Very clever. A person can get used to anything, if it’s continuous. Waiting for the next shoe to drop, when you don’t know when or if it’ll happen… that’s how you build tension.
I took a deep breath. “The room is empty,” I said. “What do you see?”
“A little girl.” Derivus frowned. “She’s… I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Derivus.”
He sighed. “It’s my daughter, as she was when she was a child. And she’s dead,” he said flatly. “Because of me. Because I went away to fight in the War, and I wasn’t there to watch over her. It’s my fault. She’s dead.”
“Is she on fire?” I asked, interested.
“Am I about to punch you in the face?” Derivus asked rhetorically.
“Do goblins have her up on strings so they can dance her around like a puppet?” I guessed. “Are ghouls frying up her skin to make Human Cracklins? Are demented and evil magic carpets tying balloons to every limb so they can fly around on her?”
“You want me to make you shut up?” Derivus demanded.
“If you’d stayed at home, if you hadn’t gone off to war, we might have lost. Then, in time, evil would have come to her. It would have come for us all, sooner or later.” I shrugged. “Maybe things turned out bad, but it’s not your fault. You made of your life a tragedy, because you had to, to save us all. You sacrificed your own happiness, because it was the right thing to do.”
“I did the right thing,” Derivus mused. He reluctantly looked up—and his eyes widened. “She’s gone.”
“Great news. Are you finally going to give me that high-five you’ve left hanging since last Thursday?”
“I need to think it over a little longer.” Derivus raised his lamp a little higher. “How about it, Zwirner? See anything yet?”
“Nope. Lisha?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, tight-lipped.
“We’re none of getting out of here unless we work together,” Derivus noted. “What do you see?”
Lisha sighed. “Zombies,” she said flatly.
“What kind of zombies?” I asked politely. “The kind that wear tuxedos and ask each other for mustard in rummy tones, or the kind that dance around in little circles, a flopping fish balanced meticulously on each head?
“What the hell kind of zombie…” She shook her head. “Neither. They’re just staggering around, very slowly. There’s a lot of them, but we could take care of them right fast if we worked together.”
Derivus frowned. “I don’t understand. What’s so scary about that?”
“Don’t you get it? We could beat them… if we worked together.” Lisha looked unhappy. “I take what I need. It’s what I do. That’s why it’s so important not to bond with anyone. Friendship is slavery. Love is death. I can do what I do because I know that everyone’s against me, and deserve what they get. They’d cheat me in a heartbeat… why shouldn’t I do the same to them? Fighting side by side with you… coming to respect you, maybe… it would murder the only person I’ve ever been. What could be scarier than that?”
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “You don’t have to like me. In fact, I rather think I hate you. Also, I know this great card trick that starts when you show me your boobs. Try it!”
“I hate you, too,” Lisha said drily. She glanced up, her eyebrows rising. “The zombies are gone.”
“How about it, Zwirner? See anything yet?” Derivus asked.
“Yes,” I said as the darkness coalesced into a small, colorful shape. “A unicorn sparkle cupcake.”
Derivus stared at me. “And…?”
“The fact that it exists indicates that I haven’t eaten it yet,” I said, worried. “Why not? Am I dead? What’s wrong with me?”
Abruptly, the door unlocked itself and creaked open. The looming sense of dread vanished. The weird scurrying noises fell completely silent.
“Wow,” Derivus said. “Congratulations, Zwirner. You were too much for a bunch of ghosts. I think you freaked them out.”
“Then it’s over?” I said, unaccountably disappointed. “We’ll never see Lisha again?”
Lisha glanced at me. “Maybe not. Do you always listen to that nattering killjoy?” she asked, jerking her thumb at Derivus.
“Generally, yes, depending on what’s on the radio.”
“But what if he wasn’t around?” she said, almost to herself. “What if I had you all to myself for a few hours… or a few days? I bet you’d be a lot more persuadable then.”
“Get to the point,” Derivus growled.
Lisha nodded, seeming to make up her mind. “This was a test,” she announced. “I had to know you could handle a threat before I told you my real problem. I need someone to help me face down the bloodthirsty mobsters that are hunting me.”
“We’re a paranormal investigation agency,” I said regretfully. “We don’t do mobsters.”
“Did I say ‘mobsters’? I meant ‘monsters’. Specifically, vampires.”
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” Derivus said.
“Shut up, churchy. No one asked you.” Lisha locked eyes with me, smiling warmly. “How about it, handsome? You and me, taking a road trip to their dire secret base in… oh, let’s say Arizona. After you defeated their horrible creeping evil, you might even get a parade!”
“So a bunch of vampires chose to live in Arizona, one of the sunniest places on earth?” Derivus said, amused. “Fine. Let’s go with that for a moment. Where in Arizona are they? Be specific.”
“What the hell kind of…” Lisha swallowed her anger. “Flagmunch. Sarcoma?” She snapped her fingers. “Tombstone! That’s a real city, isn’t it?”
“No way is Zwirner falling for that,” Derivus said, amused.
“I’m going,” I said decisively.
“What?”
“It’s a tale as old as time. I undertake a quest, I win, I claim my female reward and live happily ever after, bringing up a gaggle of children to wear creepy clown masks and stalk people I don’t like.”
“You want to propagate?” Derivus said, horrified.
“That’s what you choose to object to?” Lisha demanded. “Not the phrase ‘female reward’?”
Derivus shook his head. “Yeah, being outraged at everything Zwirner says can be exhausting. I try to limit myself to one atrocity per sentence.”
“That makes sense.” Lisha raised her hand as if swearing an oath. “I hereby promise, if I ever have kids, to bud off by spores and reproduce clonally. Now, can we get back to the important part?”
“‘Female reward’?” Derivus said, horrified.
“Cheerfully withdrawn,” I said. “Still, it sounds like a fun adventure!”
“It sounds like a scammer’s last gasp before she goes down for the third time,” Derivus argued. “A road trip to Arizona, for no reason but to get you alone long enough to rip you off? No thanks.”
“I’m in,” I said.
“Me, too,” Lisha said instantly. “You’ll have your credit cards, right? For, uh, expenses along the road?”
Derivus groaned and put his face in his hands. “I know I’m going to regret this, but I guess I don’t have a choice. I’ll go, too.”
“Hooray! Best friends forever!” I grabbed Derivus by the wrist and forced him to give me a high-five. It was a lot floppier than I prefer, but you have to start somewhere.
* * *
I got to the office bright and early the next morning. Derivus had assured me, more than once, that he wasn’t living in the back room. He just kept a cot there, and a mini-refrigerator, and slept there most nights, “because I love working so damn much.”
I gripped a bag of doughnuts and a cup of coffee, which—so far as appeasements to a grumpy deity go—may be wanting, but seem to work on Derivus. I cracked open the door to the back room. The lights were off, and Derivus was lying under a ragged blanket on his fold-up cot, apparently still asleep. I pulled an office chair into the room and sat by his side, leaning forward so that I was more or less looming over him. I wanted my smiling face to be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
“Good morning!” I said cheerfully.
“GAAHHH!” Derivus cried, thrashing wildly. He sat up, gripping his chest and panting. “Don’t DO that!”
“Do what?”
“Watch me sleep, lurking in the dark like some creepy overgrown bat.”
“Bats do that?” I said, vitally interested.
Derivus took the doughnuts, started to take a bite, and then stopped. He looked sidelong at me. “All right. What did you do to these? Are they going to sing? Bite back? Explode in a huge whoosh of confetti?”
“You should be more trusting.”
“Oh yeah? Why is the third one smoking?”
“Is it?” I said. “Huh. How interesting. I have no idea what could have caused that. I guess I’ll just have to ask for non-flammable doughnuts the next time I go in.”
Derivus shook his head, taking the coffee. “Can I at least ask why you were watching me sleep?”
“You should try to be more grateful,” I said, hurt. “You didn’t take even the most rudimentary precautions, like strapping your eyeballs down before going to sleep.”
“I… think I’d better not ask. After all, I’m not screaming yet.” Derivus sipped the coffee. “By the way, are you still planning on heading up the idiocy parade?”
“Going to Arizona to look for vampires? You bet. We can go as soon as you’re ready.”
Shaking his head, Derivus rolled out of bed. I was interested to note that his pajama bottoms had vertical blue stripes… and here I’d been pulling for merry little whales. His T-shirt had seen better days, though not recently. Derivus grabbed some random and rather rumpled clothes off the floor and threw them into a duffel bag. He then picked up some pants and looked pointedly at me. I smiled and nodded. He shoved me out of the room and slammed the door behind me. Oh. Right. People like to have privacy when they change clothes. Personally, I’ve never had much use for peace and quiet. It just means that there’s nothing to drown out the Voices as they slobber and giggle and teach me things. Not that hearing them is always so bad. My taxidermied squirrels wouldn’t look anywhere near so lifelike, or so surprised, without their help.
It wasn’t long before Derivus emerged, duffel over his shoulder. We made our way out to the van, where Lisha sat on the curb, waiting for us.
“Last chance to save a hell of a lot of time and money,” Derivus told me. “Why don’t you try running her over with the van instead? She’ll make some really amusing noises—I promise!”
“It does sound like a laugh riot,” I mused, “but I have a feeling Lisha would object. Plus, would it really be a good death? Would it be spectacular? I doubt she’s lined her greatcloak with paint-filled tubes that will burst colorfully all over the place as I squish her flat. As I always say, if you can’t make your demise fabulous, why bother dying at all?”
Lisha rolled her eyes. “If you must know,” she said laconically, “I’ve already scheduled my death for an explosion in a mirror factory. They’re going to chrome my corpse and make a disco ball out of me. It’ll be epic.”
“I haven’t decided yet, but I think my death is going to have something to do with unicorn sparkle cupcakes,” I decided. “Derivus?”
“Dying is overrated,” he said. He tossed his bag in the back of the van, next to Lisha’s backpack and my own suitcase. “I tried it—not voluntarily, I might add—back during the War. It was a huge disappointment, especially the second and third times.”
“You died?” Lisha said, her brow furrowing. “I don’t think much of the undertaker who embalmed you, is all I can say. You keep gassing out weird, speechlike noises. It’s just embarrassing.”
Derivus snorted. “Oh, I died, all right. Thing is, resurrectionists can do wonders, if there’s enough left to bother with. Three times, I gave my life for the cause, and three times they brought me back. I’ve got a trio of pretty nice statues in my honor. One, waving a fistful of wands over my head and screaming my defiance as I jump down a startled troll’s gullet. Two, charging into battle with a flamethrower in each hand. And three, sitting on the latrine looking extremely surprised.” He paused. “I’d rather not talk about that one.”
“Was it the same look you had that time I fed you those superglue doughnuts?”
“Shut up, Zwirner.”
We piled into the van. Derivus drove and Lisha took the passenger seat, while I sat in back. Derivus swiftly got us to the highway while Lisha fiddled with the GPS.
“Next stop, Arizona!” I cried. “Well. Next stop, a place that has bathrooms, but let’s not be pedantic about it. Only twenty-seven hours of driving to go!”
“I still don’t see why vampires would choose to live in one of the sunniest places on earth,” Derivus groused. “I mean, you don’t hear me boasting about the great deal I got on a hammock made of grenades.”
“You would if you bought one from me,” Lisha told him. “Stunning craftsmanship. Real old-world style. Actually, I just blow you up with whatever’s handy and call it a day, but you know, no one’s ever complained.”
“Stop being likeable,” Derivus snapped.
“Make me.”
“Does anyone want to be my friend?” I said hopefully. I waited expectantly, smiling into the silence. I winked at Lisha. “If it’s money you’re after, I may be worth even more than you know. I spent my tender years filling an album with stamps from nations which never actually existed. Quite valuable, actually, although I seem to have misplaced it. Not that that bothers me. No matter where it ends up, it has to have enough postage to make it back to me.”
“Is he always like this?” Lisha asked.
“Oh, you just wait. He’ll top himself,” Derivus assured her.
“We should go camping!” I said excitedly. “It’ll be fun! Lisha will build a fire, Derivus will tell amusing stories, and I’ll make a hearty stew.” I paused thoughtfully. “I don’t remember where I heard this, but I think you get more fiber if you leave the fairies’ wings on.”
“And there we go,” Derivus sighed.
The trip was boring at first, the GPS giving directions in a measured female voice. Perhaps because of my presence, or perhaps because I was still wearing the Maw of Mhurban-Zchtbir, it became progressively more haunted as the miles rolled by. An altogether rougher voice knitted together from the screams of the damned occasionally broke through in a burst of static to demand lane changes when there were cars right next to us. Derivus’ hands twitched, but he managed—barely!—to ignore it.
About three hours in, Derivus glanced over at Lisha, who’d been gazing silently out the window for some time. “You’re being awfully quiet,” he said.
She shrugged. “Part of my strategy was to wait for you to fall asleep so I could have a long, undisturbed chat with Zwirner. It seems unwise to push for that while you’re driving.”
“I could drive,” I offered, “if someone taught me how. And held the wheel while I mooned passing police cars, so as to bring joy into their otherwise pedestrian lives by giving them something useful to do.”
Lisha gazed at the rolling countryside. “I thought this was a good idea. Now, I’m not so sure. Keeping the two of you at a distance isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. I may have to stab you with a fork when we stop for dinner.”
“Or, I could hire you,” I suggested. “See, you’d be scamming me out of a salary and benefits that I’d be dumb enough to pay you, just for doing your job!” I hesitated, worried that she wouldn’t accept if I were too likeable. “If it helps, I promise to hold you in the deepest contempt, and spit on every individual dollar bill before I give it to you.”
“Yeah, about that,” Derivus complained, “could you please stop stamping the cash portion of my salary with fine print that says, ‘this note is legal tender… EXCEPT when used to buy brussels sprouts, in which case you are encouraged to refuse it, laugh in the buyers’ face, and light him on fire?”
“I have my principles and I stand by them.”
“You aren’t helping,” Lisha said, watching the cows go by. “Could you try to be a little more contemptible?”
“Yeah, see, I don’t know what bugs you,” Derivus told her. “If it were Zwirner, I’d just go out and buy a whopping big sack of broccoli…”
“WITCH!” I cried, pointing at him.
Lisha’s ankle monitor abruptly started beeping. “That’s supposed to happen,” she said flatly. “It’s setting down a beat in case I feel like rapping. Hold on.” She bent over and fiddled with it for a few minutes. The beeping stopped. She straightened up, reached back, and handed the unlocked ankle monitor to me.
“Oh, I don’t need it,” I said politely.
“You sure? If could provide some real inspiration if it starts beeping again.”
“Shows what you know. I always feel like rapping.”
“It’s true,” Derivus said glumly. “You don’t want to know what I heard the last time I went over to his place to use the shower. It was… disturbing.”
We drove all through the afternoon and well into the evening. Lisha and Derivus switched off from time to time. Since my repeated offers to drive were refused, I settled for trying to entertain the others by inventing stimulating car games. I guess I should have explained the rules instead of just flying straight into it and shrieking ‘COW!!!’ at the top of my lungs while pointing with both hands. On the plus side, when Derivus jumped so hard he actually hit his head on the roof, Lisha came kind of close to laughing, which I wouldn’t have thought possible at the beginning of the trip.
As darkness fell, we stopped at a diner. I liked it. The building was squared off, with an excitingly tilted roof, and half-circle beams that made it look like something out of “the future” as imagined by someone who’d died far too young.
I tugged on Derivus’ sleeve as we went inside. “What does ‘fifties-themed diner’ mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s hard to say. It kind of looks like the architect went insane and ran around chroming everything in sight, screaming with laughter all the while.”
“You know, that’s not a bad guess,” Derivus said wryly as we were led to a table.
“His poor children,” I said, attempting to emulate compassion. “Well, at least they’re fabulous now.”
We sat down at a round table made of some sort of color-flecked plastic, out in the middle of the room. There were more tables all around us and booths lining the walls to either side. The place was about a third full, but we had plenty of room to ourselves.
“Have you reconsidered working for me?” I asked Lisha. “I buy fabulous prizes for all of my employees. Well, for the ones who return my high-fives, anyway.” I looked at Derivus out of the corner of my eye. He solemnly shook his head.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Lisha said. “I don’t want to like you. I don’t want to respect you. The harder you try, the more you make me need to push you away before I get to a place I can’t come back from.”
“Ah. I see. I should endeavor to be more offensive.” I nodded, thinking it over. “Do you think that honesty is essential to a friendship? I’m not so sure it is. As just one example, if you asked me whether those pants make your butt look big, and I was being scrupulously honest, I would be forced—quite against my will—to admit that no, it’s the size of your butt that makes your butt look big. Which seems like an infelicitous start to an otherwise promising relationship.”
Lisha, who’d just been taking a sip of water, seems to swallow some of it the wrong way and started to choke.
“Truth is overrated,” Derivus said. “Lying is better.”
“In a relationship?” I said dubiously.
“Especially in a relationship.”
“Isn’t the goal to share one’s true inner self with the other party?”
Derivus solemnly shook his head. “That only works if your true inner self isn’t a travesty fit only for the depraved and the perverted. Lie, is my advice. Lie from morning to noon to night. Find someone special and lie, lie, lie for as long as you can. Forever, if you can swing it.”
“The blue puppet says to always be true to yourself,” I said dubiously.
“Excellent advice. Have you told a lie, ever, in your life? Then you’re a liar, and being true to yourself means telling lies!”
“You’re right!” I said, impressed. “Hooray for Derivus! Lies all around!”
“Well, I hate you again,” Lisha said wryly. “Thanks, I think.”
The waitress took our orders. Once she brought our food, there was a brief but companionable silence as we ate. Well, I use the word “silence” advisedly. According to the Voices, eating is a competition, and I aim to win.
“DONE!” I cried, slamming down my fork. I smiled. “And now, a stimulating after-dinner conversation! Or monologue, given that you losers are still eating. What say I explicate the Japanese whaling industry, starting with the rather cheerful phrase, ‘viscera chute’?”
Derivus cleared his throat. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard they make milkshakes here by telling sad, sad stories to cookie elves until they weep chocolatey ooze all the hell over the place.”
“Wow!” I said, surging to my feet. “That I’ve got to see!”
“That was mean,” Lisha murmured appreciatively.
Derivus smirked into his glass. “You’ll thank me when you get to drink the rest of your water without having to imagine what sort of dinosaur may have pooped in it a hundred million years ago.”
Lisha made a face. “Why would you even say that? Telling someone not to imagine something is the surest way to make sure that they have to.”
“Oh, come on, it’s easy!” I said as I struggled to disentangle myself from my chair. “Just make very certain you don’t think about a constipated stegosaur crouching over a stream and grunting. Neither of us wants that. By the way, do you think they have individual croutons in back, or just one really big one they keep chipping pieces off of?”
“Go,” Lisha told me. “Kitchen. Now.”
“I hear and obey!”
I hurried to the counter. When the folks there heard that I’d pay good money for the privilege of washing dishes or even—heaven forfend!—making fries, my new friends took my money and let me through. My experiences were fun and educational, and I even made some lifelong pals, depending on whether rodents count! At last I made my way back to our table.
Lisha was still studying her water as if trying to figure out if she dared take a sip. Derivus examined the last piece of a hamburger with the air of a man who had conquered his final mountain, and ate it.
“Maura let me run the deep fryer,” I boasted. “I accidentally scalded my hand! The rest was fun, too.”
Lisha glanced at my bandaged and reddened hand, her eyebrows rising.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Oh, yes. A lot.”
She looked sidelong at me. “Then why aren’t you whining and crying and trying to make us feel sorry for you?”
I shrugged. “I made my choice. I’ll accept the consequences.”
Lisha made a face. “So… you’re quietly accepting the consequences of your actions, instead of fishing for sympathy? No, I don’t like this one bit. Say something offensive. Give me a reason to hold you in contempt.”
“I wish I could, but I’m awesome,” I modestly admitted. “For example, it only took me twenty tries to learn how to make fries! It’s true. You should have seen me back there: I conducted a terrifying ritual in which virgin potato slices were sacrificed to a seething hell-maw of snarling oil, and then—poof! Just like that, the potatoes vanished and fries appeared! Magic!”
“He’s joking,” Derivus confided. “Zwirner isn’t actually that stupid. He says things like that to amuse us.” He paused. “I hope.”
“Weren’t you wearing a ring?” Lisha asked.
“Sure. The Maw of Mhurban-Zchtbir, one of the most potent totems of darkness in the entire—” I held up my scalded hand, which was now completely unadorned. “Uh-oh.”
Before I continue my narrative, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I love you. Well, the blue puppet told me to love everyone, but don’t let that bother you. You have an inner light that no one else has ever seen, and I think that I would have loved you regardless. But it is what the puppet commanded. So please think better of the fact that I accidentally dropped an icon of pure evil into a cheap diner’s deep-fryer. Really, it could have happened to anyone.
At the next table over, an elderly woman suddenly screamed. The plate of spaghetti in front of her exploded into a thousand pallid, waving tentacles that grabbed her by the ears and dragged her toward its sauce-tainted maw. At a booth by the window, a blueberry pie giggled maliciously and shot purple juices at its victims’ eyes. Over by the counter, a screaming man ran back and forth, pawing at the fried eggs that clung to his eyes until he ran into the wall with a resounding bang.
“Does it occur to anyone else that this is incredibly stupid?” Lisha asked. “I mean, these things are food. For the most part, they don’t even have arms and legs.”
“We made this mess,” Derivus said tiredly. “We’ve got to deal with it.”
“Excuse me? Who made this mess?”
“We’re a team, Zwirner and I. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“And a great team we make, too!” I said enthusiastically. “Derivus gives the orders, and I carry them out!”
“This is going to be a joy to watch,” Lisha muttered.
Derivus set his chair atop the table and climbed up so he could have an eagle-eye view of the entire place. Obeying his shouted orders, I ran back and forth across the diner.
“Giggling burgers, nine o’clock!” Derivus shouted. “Spork them… NOW!”
I’m sure Lisha thought he was using me, but his part in our partnership was absolutely necessary. I was lost in the fog of war, too close to all of those inchworming fries and frisbee-flying pancakes to see the bigger picture. I could only trust that Derivus was sending me to the right place with the right implement of culinary destruction as I carried on the fight. One by one, I freed panicking diners from attacks that were, to put it mildly, pathetic. I don’t care how much demonic fervor you cram into a bottle of barbecue sauce, it can’t do much more than sit there and drip at you. One by one, customers and staff fled the diner. Soon, the place was empty save for the three of us… and a seemingly endless stream of savory new attackers that kept crawling out of the delivery slot by the counter. It was considerate of them to keep ringing the bell each time a new order came up.
“This… getting out of hand…” I panted, hurrying to obey Derivus’ orders. I was falling behind, and those possessed hamburgers could make their ire known when they felt neglected. If you’ve never seen a hamburger explode, think fireworks, only a lot greasier.
“Lisha. You want to help out, maybe?” Derivus demanded.
Still seated at our table, Lisha dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I could go over there, sure, but at what cost? I might bang my elbow or something. Zwirner’s going to die either way, and a hurt me plus a dead Zwirner leaves us significantly worse off than a healthy me plus a dead Zwirner. Logically, I have no choice but to stay here! We have to save as many people, or parts of people, as we can, and one is greater than zero.” She patted her elbow. “So is zero-point-zero-three-eight.”
“She has a point,” I panted, sprinting across the diner as a chortling pie pursued me, rolling after me in a stinking haze of rhubarb.
“It’s rank cowardice,” Derivus snapped.
“I’m not on your payroll,” Lisha shot back. “I was smart enough to stay independent. You’re not exactly offering me my dream job, you know?”
“You’ve had this dream?” I wheezed, sprinting the other way pursued by a pudding. “Me too! Though not as often as the one about showing up naked for a test. The trick is to decide that you were taking Public Nudity 101, meaning that you aced your test and got a hundred percent by showing up that way. Plus, they give you a trophy that looks like you with your dingle out! Tests are fun. What was I saying?”
“LISTEN TO ME!” Derivus roared, his face red as he confronted Lisha. “We’re going to LOSE A MAN because of your inaction!”
“Yeah? So?”
Derivus glared at her. “Fine. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I’m going to join him. Just know that there’s a reason nobody loves you. It isn’t because life is unfair. It’s because of the invisible stink of selfishness that surrounds you. You’re pathetic. No, worse than that: You’re boring,” he said, growing increasingly red-faced as he got himself worked up. “You think that standing apart from the world makes you superior to it. No. It makes you a tiny, slithering, wretched little worm, wallowing in a grotesque slurry of slime and shame!”
“All right,” Lisha said, smiling just a little. “Tell you what. I’ll help… so long as you give me fun, easy tasks that I want to do anyway. Like eating magic pie. I’ll do that.”
Derivus sat heavily in his observer’s chair, staring at her in disbelief. “Then take out that hopping ear of corn before I have a massive coronary. Butter knife. South wall. HURRY!”
“Wouldn’t corn holders work better?”
“DAMN IT, WOMAN, WE DON’T HAVE TIME!”
She rolled her eyes and sauntered toward the south wall. Halfhearted as it was, her help made a big difference. Once Lisha joined in, I was finally able to catch up with the edible menace. Before I knew it, the diner was clear.
I walked over to the kitchen door, Lisha on one side of me, Derivus on the other. I rested my ear against it. In the kitchen, I could hear something heavy dragging itself across the tiles.
“Steady, now,” Derivus murmured.
“Yeah. You wouldn’t want to trip and land face-first in an inimical magic pudding,” Lisha said sardonically. “Which is literally the only way it could kill you: By sitting there and hoping you’d actively cooperate in your own drowning.”
“I don’t know,” I mused. “It could also endeavor to be a really depressing pudding, thus making anyone who beholds it suicidal.”
“Open the door,” Derivus growled.
I pushed the door open. Emerging from the oven was a turkey, cooked to a delectable butter-browned perfection. It was moving. With all of the slow inevitability of the living dead, it dragged itself across the floor, on a quest from beyond the grave to find something to stuff itself with.
“Bingo,” Derivus said. “The ring’s got to be in there.”
“Or, you know, maybe Zwirner left it back at the table,” Lisha suggested, starting to back away. “Maybe I should just nip back and have a look.”
“NOW!” Derivus bellowed. I flung myself at the turkey and wrapped my arms around it. While Lisha looked on in fascinated disgust, Derivus took a deep breath and thrust his arm into the turkey’s stuffing-hole. His arm went in… and in… until he was shoulder-deep.
“What the hell…?”
“It’s bigger on the inside?” I asked, fascinated. “Do you suppose there’s an entire magical land hidden up that turkey’s ass?”
“Reminder to myself,” Lisha said under her breath. “If a kid invites me to visit Narnia, check her first for smears of cranberry sauce.”
“This has to have tactical applications,” Derivus mused, rummaging around inside the seemingly bottomless turkey. “I mean, we could theoretically hide a couple hundred pounds of high explosives in here…”
“…and then shout ‘nice to MEAT you!’ as we serve the turkey to a gang of international terrorists!” I said excitedly.
“Whatever floats your… ah!” Derivus yanked the Maw of Mhurban-Zchtbir out of the turkey. It shuddered, flopped around for a moment, then abruptly went still. Derivus handed the ring to me. It was a little crispy from the fry oil, but I put it back on my finger.
“Great work,” Lisha said, “we’d better get back on the road before the cops show up.”
Derivus frowned. “What about all the damage? Shouldn’t we leave our contact information or something?”
“What good would that do?” she shot back. “The owners would spend five years and a mountain of lawyer’s fees suing the crap out of Zwirner, win too little too late, and go out of business. If we sneak out now, they make an insurance claim and they’re open again in a week. Really, we’re doing this for their benefit.”
“That doesn’t sound… I mean, wouldn’t the insurance company be the one that… I just think…”
Lisha smiled at him. “Go out to the van and get some sleep. Trust us to do what’s right. That way, whatever happens is our fault—not yours.”
“I really shouldn’t… but…” Derivus slapped his hand on my shoulder. “Be the man I know you can be, Zwirner. We’re all counting on you.” Shaking his head as if to wash his hands of the whole sordid affair, he hurried out of the kitchen.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Lisha said, amused. She glanced at me, her smile suddenly ratcheting up several notches. “So! Alone at last… uh…” Her smile faltered. “And you’re covered in grease. You know, this isn’t going exactly the way I imagined.”
“We have to do what’s right,” I insisted.
“Were you listening to a single word I said?” Lisha demanded.
“We don’t have a choice. We have to wait until Derivus falls asleep, then attach small but powerful squid to his face. He never straps his eyeballs down when he sleeps, not even a little. He needs to learn a lesson.”
Lisha stared at me. “What lesson?”
“I actually don’t remember,” I admitted. “Also, I’ve been banned from every pet store in the region, so it wouldn’t be easy to procure the squid. I suppose we’ll have to give it a miss. Shall we go?”
Lisha shook her head and left the kitchen. I hung back, alone for the moment. Here, if only for a moment, I’d known magic. Stupid magic, yes, and disappointing, but still. Magic.
Glancing left and right, I casually flipped open a casket-shaped floor refrigerator. Inside, along with uncooked hamburgers and such, was a row of about half a dozen cornish game hens. Mini turkeys, basically. One by one, I stuck by beringed hand into their stuffing cavities, marvelling as I turned them into bottomless containers, far bigger inside than out.
“Okay, this is too cool for words,” I said. I grabbed the six birds, stuffed them in a canvas bag bearing the diner’s logo, and ran out to join Derivus and Lisha.